pole, like a pigeon-house; and the innocent way in which the maiden
helped the traveller in his bath, and how the aged men ran so fast that
the devil could not catch them; and, best of all, because it gives a
smack in the face to modern pseudo-scientific medical cant about hygiene,
showing how the Laplanders break every 'law,' human and 'divine',
ventilation, bath, and diet--all the trash--and therefore enjoy the most
excellent health, and live to a great old age. Still I have not succeeded
in describing the immense labour there was in learning to distinguish
plants on the Linnaean system. Then comes in order of time the natural
system, the geographical distribution; then there is the geological
relationship, so to say, to Pliocene plants, natural selection and
evolution. Of that let us say nothing; let sleeping dogs lie, and
evolution is a very weary dog. Most charming, however, will be found the
later studies of naturalists on the interdependence of flowers and
insects; there is another work the dandelion has got to do--endless,
endless botany! Where did the plants come from at first? Did they come
creeping up out of the sea at the edge of the estuaries, and gradually
run their roots into the ground, and so make green the earth? Did Man
come out of the sea, as the Greeks thought? There are so many ideas in
plants. Flora, with a full lap, scattering knowledge and flowers
together; everything good and sweet seems to come out of flowers, up to
the very highest thoughts of the soul, and we carry them daily to the
very threshold of the other world. Next you may try the microscope and
its literature, and find the crystals in the rhubarb.

I remember taking sly glances when I was a very little boy at an old
Culpepper's Herbal, heavily bound in leather and curiously illustrated.
It was so deliciously wicked to read about the poisons; and I thought
perhaps it was a book like that, only in papyrus rolls, that was used by
the sorceress who got ready the poisoned mushrooms in old Rome. Youth's